Striking While The Iron Is Hot

I have been trying to buy a new ironing board cover for several years. The old one is scorched, and its drawstring has pulled out of the casing, so it won't stay on the board.

In these same years, I have bought and sold a house, bought and junked a car, acquired several new major appliances and a personal computer and a dining room table. These all have been successful purchases, tasteful even. I am a steady and patriotic shopper, doing my part to maintain all consumer confidence indicators.

So it's not my fault that I've been unable to commit to a mass-market ironing board cover. There is no more hideous-looking piece of home utility, and who can do chores with ugly accessories?

For the past 40 years, ironing board cover design has been fixed, stuck in housewife kitsch, like the patterns on paper towels. Marching geese with gingham neckerchiefs. "Bless This Home" banners. Bushel baskets of apples, their should-be rosy hue faded to a poor pink. Kittens.

Until now. In that scary, witchy way that she has, Martha Stewart has come to know about this problem. Recently, as part of 314 items in Everyday Keeping, her sixth line for Kmart, Martha unveiled six ironing boards and 13 ironing board covers. Thirteen!

Among the many, many things Martha knows is the human optimism that believes the smallest unit of order can send all chaos packing. There may be no better metaphor for this than the quick swipe with hot metal that enforces straight lines on rumple and wrinkle.

A freshly ironed cotton shirt is fiber full of promise. It hangs alive in the air, giving off heat, full and puffed up and ready to master the day.

Those wash-and-wear imitations, snapped out of the dryer and pulled straight on the seams? They hang there limply, cuffs dangling weakly. If you had a date with this shirt, you would feign a headache and leave.

Who irons anymore, besides dry cleaners?

Tiger Woods, for one. It said on the front page of The Washington Post the other day that the millionaire athlete insists on pressing his own shirts. Perhaps he has a customized ironing board cover printed with golf balls, and his caddy totes it from hotel room to hotel room.

John Smoltz, for another. He's one Atlanta Braves pitcher who really knows how to bring the heat, which he did in multiple degrees to his chest some years back. He was trying to iron his shirt while wearing it, an act of such stupendous idiocy that Smoltz has denied the particulars for years.

And the consumers who require Target to stock 21 models of irons at the store's online site are all ironing.

And there is Martha, of course. Ironing, she says, is her favorite domestic art, right up there with vacuuming.

"I do it to relax," she said. "I think because it is something we did in my family. Sometimes, when I come home from a big trip, I go down in my basement and start ironing, and the next thing I know it's 2 o'clock in the morning."

She started, as many little girls of her generation did, with those hankies, kept sprinkled with water in the plastic bag in the refrigerator. Unlike the rest of us, Martha taught her own daughter, Alexis, to iron. And iron Alexis still does.

"Oh yes!" Martha said, proudly. "And she has steaming machines now. The first thing she bought when she moved into her apartment was a mangle, a Miele. They make a wonderful mangle that rolls and presses at the same time."

The Miele mangle costs $1,900, and Martha herself has three of them, in three different houses. Recently, she bought a hotel-grade mangle capable of doing 60-inch sheets, so "now I can have real linen sheets."

Say what you might about Martha Stewart, she has great range. A woman who insists on the most exquisite imported equipment for her own gigantic laundry room, she also can create a sturdy tailor's ironing board with steel iron rest that sells for $59.99. It's the product leader in the new line, said Martha, much to Kmart's surprise, but not hers.

And not mine. I got all excited with the news of Everyday Keeping. Surely, when Martha turned her attention to the aesthetic appeal and functioning of an ironing board cover, I could resume proper ironing, a task I'd avoided because the glare from my old Day-Glo cover might give rise to cataracts.

I pored over the product specifications. The early data were very promising. The extra thick ironing board covers feature Star Wars technology for $14.99. They come with Titanium Scorchshield and DuPont Teflon fabric protector that guards against burns and stains, and an elastic drawcord with a barrel lock (perfect!) and Velcro straps.

Americans are pretty much suckers for anything with Velcro. It has a tenacious stick-to-itiveness that matches our own. It has foam and fiber to create an extra-thick surface, and a 10-year fit guarantee.

Unfortunately -- and it pains me to write this -- the splendid covers come in patterns that look like bad shelf paper. There are daisy ribbons and rooster borders and berries that look more Laura Ashley than Martha Stewart. There is ivy on a trellis.

I could make my own. I found a pattern on the Internet. I think I still have the sewing machine somewhere.

But I really want Martha's barrel lock and Velcro, and there is one acceptable-looking cover, boring and beige.

It comes on top of that $59.99 ironing board, and, after all, mine is sort of rickety.